The Nashville Scene channels RTP on the Durham debacle.

When the Republican caucus didn’t take up the Jeremy Durham case back on January 12, the mainstream media (and we gratuitously include the Nashville Scene in that category) ran screaming out of the Capitol like their hair was on fire. Such was their manufactured sense of outrage at having been shut out of a meeting, one would have thought Western Civilization was coming to an end for reasons other than radical Islam and Donald Trump.

The MSM, as usual, missed the whole point of the parable. That is, until they read the RTP post on January 13th (“Winner & Losers”).

Here is what Rocky Top said two weeks ago:

“Beth Harwell – by engaging in her hands-off, ignore-the-problem until it metastasizes into an even bigger problem that must be addressed, Harwell put her entire caucus through a painful – and needless – exercise. She absolutely has known for months about most of the rumors swirling around Rep. Durham and yet she did not have the courage or leadership ability to simply call him into her office and tell him to cut the crap. Instead, she hid behind staffer Connie Ridley, who had a brief and cryptic meeting with Durham, allowing Beth to later to try and claim she had done something. The result of her lack of leadership was the cascade of events that led to yesterday’s caucus meeting.

“…the lack of actual leadership among the leadership is a damning indictment of their ability to manage events in the House.”

And here are quotes from the Nashville Scene this morning:

“For months, Durham’s volatile, unpredictable behavior has been common knowledge at Legislative Plaza … House leaders have bobbed and weaved and pretended ignorance. They could have forced Durham out of their leadership at any time, doing what’s right and saving themselves a ton of publicity…”

“Beth Hawell and Connie Ridley… continue to f**k this up. And Harwell’s excuses for why they continue to f**k this up are so stupid that they bore on the insulting.”

“Jeremy Durham is his own problem. The culture that allows him to flourish is Beth Harwell’s.”

Superfluous profanity notwithstanding, we admire your quick grasp on the obvious there, dudes. With the help of RTP, you guys figured it out faster than Dave Boucher can leave a news tip on Alanna Aulter’s pillow.

RTP has checked with our lawyers and they inform us that shameless paraphrasing of RTP’s postings and analyses isn’t actually plagiarism. They also tell us that claiming you are a journalist doesn’t actually make you one. So it looks like you guys skate by on both counts.

Still, if you are going to rely on the crew at RTP to put your foaming-at-the-mouth news coverage into perspective, then at least let us share in the profits generated by your news divisions.